by H. D. Gordon
“Jesus,” he muttered, as he took a seat beside me on the bench. We were silent a moment, during which time he tore open a Twinkie wrapper and handed me the contents. I shoved it into my mouth in a way that probably should have embarrassed me a little, but did not.
“What is it that’s got such hooks in you?” Nick asked me. “The people, or the place?”
I shrugged, licking some cream from my fingers and accepting the next terribly unhealthy snack Nick handed me. “Both, I guess,” I admitted between bites. I was afraid to look at him directly, but forced myself to anyway. “Do you hate me?” I asked. “Think I’m stupid?”
Nick wrapped his large arm around my shoulder, letting out a low sigh before he answered. “First, I could never hate you, Aria,” he said, and his brown eyes found mine. He let out a short laugh. “I think I was meant to love you, actually. Or, at least, everything in my life seemed to lead up to it. I’ve never loved anyone before. Not since I was separated from my family.”
I had stopped chewing, and was studying him through blurry eyes. Part of me was terrified to hear whatever he was going to say, and the other part of me knew I needed to hear it. Whatever Nick Ramhart was going to tell me, somehow I knew that it was going to have an influence over whatever I did next.
“I guess I should be perfectly honest with you,” he continued. “I want you to come back to the Brokers, but I’m specifically requesting you as my partner. I want to be the one you trust, the one who takes care of you, the one you count on to keep you safe. What I said to the superiors wasn’t a lie. I can’t make you come, and I also don’t want to guilt you into it, but I’ve put my future with the Brokers in your hands, and I did that because I want you. I want you for as long as you’ll have me, and I hope you feel the same.”
As he said these last words, the train rolled into the station, coming a stop beside the platform on which we were waiting. A whistle blew into the air. There was the screech of the metal skating over the tracks, and the stir of wind as the train blocked out my view of Grant City, and its automatic doors slid open, offering to take me in.
Nick stood, adjusting his backpack over his wide shoulders and grabbing my trunk with his left hand. His right hand, he held out to me.
Looking down at me where I sat on the bench, his ginger hair shining in the light of the new day, and his brown eyes full of hope that rested upon my shoulders, Nick Ramhart asked, “What’s it gonna be, Aria Fae? You staying, or are you going?”
My fist clenched around the piece of paper in my pocket, the one that held only two words—two simple words smeared by tears. The captain leaned out of the front of the train and shouted for all to board, and Nick waited with bated breath for me to answer.
I placed my hand in his and let him pull me to my feet.
CHAPTER 60
I was nervous. Even more nervous than when I had walked into this place for the first time. Though I recognized that it was mostly in my own mind, I felt like every eyeball in the place was on me, wondering what I was doing here.
Of course, they were doing no such thing. It was lunchtime, and most everyone was either lost in their food or the conversations of those around them, and weren’t likely paying much mind to me.
Still, I stood for a moment as if I didn’t know where to go, before gripping my lunch tray, crossing the main area, and pushing open the door that led to the outside. There, I spotted a familiar strawberry-blonde head, blue eyes finding me in the same moment.
In the following heartbeat, I was fumbling with my tray, balancing it on the tips of my fingers as I absorbed the near-tackle hug from Samantha Shy.
“Dude,” I said with a laugh, “careful with the burger.”
Sam pulled back, looking at me as though she were seeing a ghost. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “I thought you’d be halfway to wherever you were going by now.” She gripped my arms, her face going deathly serious. “Does… does this mean you’re staying?”
I grinned, feeling something heavy lift off my chest that I hadn’t even known I’d been carrying there. “Try to contain yourself,” I warned, and paused for dramatic effect. With a longer than necessary inhalation, at last, I nodded. “Yes, I’m staying. I guess you can’t get rid of me that easily.”
Sam leapt up into the air and pumped her fist, making my cheeks go rosy as some of the eyes in the courtyard drew toward us. “Don’t play with my heart, Aria Fae,” Sam warned. “Is this for real?”
I followed her over to our usual spot, where an old bench sat under one of the courtyards handful of trees. As we assumed our usual seats, I said, “Train left this morning without me.” My chest gave a squeeze. “Nick was on it. He wasn’t very happy with me.” I sighed. “I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again, or if he’d even talk to me if I did.”
Freeing my burger from the foil that imprisoned it, I shoved a big bite into my mouth to keep my tears at bay. Speaking these things out loud was harder than I’d thought it’d be.
I could feel Sam’s eyes on me from where she sat beside me. “That’s gotta suck,” she said. “I’m sorry. I know you had a… special relationship with him.”
If we didn’t stop talking about it, I was afraid I might fall into a depression that would prove difficult to claw out of. I shoved some fries into my mouth, giving Sam a crooked, full-cheeked smile and a wink. “Yeah, well, nothing a little of the unhealthiest food in the world can’t take care of.” I tilted my head, shoved more burger in my face. Around my mouthful, I said, “Anyway, I’m not looking back now. That’s not the way I want to go.”
Sam rested her head on my shoulder, her arm going about my waist as she nibbled on the end of a celery stick. “I knew you’d stay,” she said. “I knew you couldn’t leave me.”
“Oh yeah? How’d you know that? I didn’t even know that.”
Sam laughed, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “Because we’re family, you and me.” She paused, considering. “And Matt, too. We’re a team. I know it happened kind of fast, but it happened. We became a family, and family has a way of putting hooks in you.”
I felt a smile come to my lips, and tried to remember the last time I’d really smiled. It seemed it had to be ages ago. Remembering that there were legitimate reasons I’d been against staying in Grant City, however, my face fell into a frown.
Across the courtyard, Andrea Ramos was shooting daggers at me with her glare. I set my foam lunch tray on the bench beside me, dusting my hands off on my jeans.
Sam followed my gaze, and I’m pretty sure she swallowed audibly. “Uh, oh,” she said. “I know that look. Whatever you’re thinking about doing, let’s just not do it, Aria.”
I shot Sam a glance as I rolled my neck and stood. “Relax,” I told her. “I just need to talk to her. Don’t act like you think I’m going to throw her through a wall or something.”
In response, Sam only blinked at me behind her glasses. Then, she sighed and stood.
I waved a hand, telling her to sit as I watched Andrea leave the lunchroom. She was getting away. “Stay here, Sam,” I said.
“Pfft,” Sam replied, and brushed past me, heading after Andrea Ramos.
I spared one last glance at my remaining fries and followed after my best friend.
***
We paused outside the door to the girl’s restroom. Sam and I had seen Andrea enter just a moment before. I told myself that, no matter what, this conversation would not result in physical confrontation. I had to be better than that.
When I pushed though the bathroom door with Sam on my heels, we entered the baby blue painted lavatory to find Andrea standing before the long mirror above the sink, applying a light pink gloss to her lips. Her shoulders tightened visibly as soon as she took sight of us.
I held my hands up before she could speak. “I just want to talk,” I said.
Andrea’s dark eyes flicked to Sam and back to me. “And you need your lapdog with you to do that?”
Sam tossed her hands up. “Why are you
such a bitch?” she asked.
Andrea shifted as if to move toward her, but I stepped swiftly into the way and struggled not to roll my eyes. “Let’s not be ridiculous,” I said, holding Andrea’s glare. “I don’t want to fight you.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Sam said from behind me. “You can totally throw her ass through a wall if you want. It’s what she deserves for being a snitch.”
“Who the hell you calling a snitch?” Andrea snapped, trying to shove past me, but I planted my left hand on her chest and pushed her hard enough that she stumbled back a couple feet and caught herself on the sink.
“Puta,” she spat. “So very brave with your bodyguard standing near.”
I released a short breath, keeping hold on my cool. This clearly was going to be a harder task than I’d anticipated. Shooting both of the girls I was standing between hard looks, I fixed my gaze back on Andrea.
“Two detectives came to my house the other day, Andrea,” I said. “They told me someone called in a tip telling them that I might have information on the Masked Maiden.”
I watched Andrea’s aura closely as I relayed this information, and my brow furrowed as I concluded that this was not something Andrea had been aware of, that she was as surprised as me to hear it.
That didn’t stop a slow smile from spreading across her face. “Wasn’t me who snitched,” Andrea said, grinning. “But serves you right. Looks like I’m not your only enemy in Grant City.”
“Lying b—”
I held my hand up, cutting Sam off, because Andrea was not lying. I had both the steady rhythm of her heartbeat and the certain swirl of her aura to prove it.
“She’s telling the truth,” I said, as much to myself as to Sam. “She’s not the one who told.”
This realization was hard to come to terms with. Suddenly, my head was spinning with possibilities, running through the list of potential suspects, pegging supposed friends for possible traitors. I cleared my throat and did my best to wrangle in my thoughts.
Seeing that this information surprised and worried me, Andrea smirked and skirted around me, moving toward the exit. “Guess you better watch your back,” she said, and left.
Sam and I stood in silence for several seconds, trying to absorb this development. I could see the worry starting to spread over her face as surely as it was visible on mine. Sam leaned back against the sink, biting her lip. My eyes went to the mirror behind her, and when I took sight of my reflection, for a flash of a moment, I saw a black mask covering my eyes, a hood covering my head. I saw her, almost as if she and I were not one and the same.
Sam broke my paralysis by asking the million-dollar question. “Aria,” she said, her pretty face grim. “If it wasn’t Andrea who snitched on you, then who did?”
CHAPTER 61
“Boo,” I said, and smiled a little at the fact that he didn’t even flinch, even though I was sure my approach had been as stealthy and silent as the ghost of a ninja.
In fact, I was the one who flinched, because once he set eyes on me, he held as still as a statue for all of three heartbeats. Then, with an abruptness that stole my breath away, he was on his feet and scooping me up into a hug that restricted my air even further.
My shoes left the ground and my arms went around him, both for purchase and propriety.
“I missed you, too,” I said, the unexpected admission making my cheeks heat.
As if regaining control over himself, Thomas Reid set me back down on my feet and held me at arm’s length for a moment, looking at me like he wasn’t sure he could believe what he was seeing.
When he finally spoke, all he said was, “You stayed.”
I shrugged, trying and failing to douse the duel fires that had engulfed my cheeks. “Yeah, well, I guess I have some unfinished business here in Grant City.”
Thomas nodded slowly, his hazel eyes taking me in as if I were one of the seven wonders of the world, a sight one saw maybe once, if ever, in a lifetime. His hand came up and his fingers trailed the edge of my hood. With a hesitation that I was getting lost in, he gently pulled it down off my head, revealing my wild mane of reddish-brown hair, allowing the cool night air to rush in and kiss my cheeks.
“You have unfinished business here?” he asked. “Or the Masked Maiden has unfinished business?”
I chewed at my lip to keep from shifting on my feet. Something about Thomas Reid always made me want to fidget. “Both,” I answered, because it was true. My eyes wandered down to the perfect curve of his lips, but I pulled them away again.
For a moment, I could’ve sworn he was going to kiss me, and so when he turned away, gazing out over the rooftops and into the concrete jungle that was Grant City, I had to concentrate so as to keep my shoulders from dropping in disappointment.
Releasing a sigh, I wandered over to the edge of the roof where he was standing, and perched beside him on the edge.
We were silent for a little bit, and comfortable in it, as we always seemed to be.
At last, I said, “How’d you know I was going to be at the train station?”
Thomas continued to stare into the night, his shoulders rising and falling in a shrug. “I didn’t know for sure, but I hoped.”
I wrung my hands together, realized I was doing it, and stopped. “Any chance you haven’t read that little letter I left under your door?”
Thomas smiled, said nothing.
I gave him a little shove, and he actually laughed. “If you haven’t read it,” I said, hoping beyond hope, “Is there any chance I can get it back? I’m staying in Grant City, so a lot of what I wrote in there… doesn’t… apply.”
“Doesn’t apply,” he repeated, watching me now from the corner of his eyes.
“Well, I just mean that I thought I was never going to see you again.” I shifted on the ledge, considering plunging over the edge to avoid this embarrassment. “Did you read it or not?” I demanded.
Thomas only lifted one side of his mouth, his handsome face serious, but his aura streaked through with golden amusement. “Maybe,” he said.
“Oh, my God. You are such a buttwipe.”
Thomas looked aghast, making me narrow my eyes suspiciously.
“A buttwipe?” he said, and reached into his jacket, removing a folded-up piece of paper that had been tucked inside. My cheeks felt like active volcanoes as I recognized the paper as the letter I’d written to him.
He unfolded it and pointed to something on the page. “But right here you said that I was the most beautiful man you’d ever seen,” he read, jerking out of my reach as I made a futile attempt to snatch the paper from him. “And that I was kind, and generous, and—” he paused and laughed, “mysterious like the dark side of the moon.”
I groaned. Did I really write that? W-T-F had I been thinking?
“I’m going to throw myself off the building now,” I told him. “I’m just going to fall to my death, and it’ll pretty much be your fault.”
Thomas smirked, dancing away from me again as I tried to snatch the stupid letter and failed. “Why would you do that?” he asked. “In paragraph two, you said you feel like you can be yourself when you’re with me, that I’m one of the few people you don’t have to wear a mask around.”
I jumped up onto the ledge of the roof and looked back at him. “Cool,” I said. “I’m just gonna go die now. I really hope you’re happy with yourself.”
“Aria—”
“Here I go, down to my death,” I continued. “You should know that I’m going to use my afterlife to haunt you, since I’ll be living it thanks to your embarrassing me.”
“Aria,” he repeated with a laugh.
I held up my hand, not looking back. “Don’t try to talk me out of it, Thomas. It’s much too late for that. You just have to live with what you’ve done.”
I eyed my fire escape twelve feet below, preparing to make the leap and free myself from this peculiar nightmare. When I’d come up here, I’d prayed that he hadn’t had the chance to read the lett
er. I’d even tried breaking into his apartment to retrieve it after school today, only to get through the door with my lock-picking skills and find that it wasn’t on the floor where I’d left it.
Now I saw that he had not only read it, but had been carrying it with him. Had he known all along, like Sam had claimed to, that I would not be able to go through with leaving Grant City? And if he hadn’t, what did it mean that he’d been carrying around the letter? Had that been a purposeful thing?
I was half a heartbeat from leaping over the edge of our apartment rooftop when Thomas gripped my hand and pulled me back. I let out a little howl of surprise, falling back off the ledge with my stomach in my throat as I prepared to land hard.
Instead, I fell right into Thomas’s arms. He caught me with an ease that spoke to his strength. All of a sudden, I found myself surrounded by him. His familiar, manly scent filled my nose, his warm but dark aura a cloud I was floating in. With a breath-taking clarity, the real reason I had been unable to leave Grant City occurred to me, and more than anything that had happened since I’d come to this place, this occurrence frightened me most of all.
I had many reasons to stay, and even more reasons to leave, but in the end, I had stayed because Thomas Reid had asked it of me, because whatever spell my mysterious neighbor had cast over me, it was some potent stuff, some serious magic.
As he cradled me in his arms, holding me close to his wide chest, I was captured by the hazel of his eyes, by the powerful pull that was The Thomas Effect.
If he doesn’t kiss me now, I thought, I might just throat-punch him.
As it turned out, I ended up having to do no such thing. One side of Thomas’s perfect mouth lifted in an almost-smile, as if he could read my mind, and then he cupped my face in his warm, rough hands, and kissed me as if I were fragile enough to break.
Holy cannoli! I thought, my inner Sam making me giggle against his lips. He tried to pull back, but I wouldn’t let him. I dug my fingers into his thick, dark hair and held him where he was. He didn’t put up a fight.
